Trilogy Residents Saved Their Clubhouse. Now It's a Global Award Winner.
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
On a Wednesday evening this month, the high-top community table at Kitchen Ten Eleven is probably full. Neighbors are splitting a margherita pizza, someone has ordered the shaved prime rib French dip, and there is at least one pour of La Quinta Brewing Co.'s Even Par IPA sweating on the bar. It looks, on the surface, like any well-run clubhouse restaurant on any golf course in the desert.
It is not that. What is sitting on that table came within a signature away from disappearing for good, and it exists in its current form because the people eating at it voted for it themselves.
Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta was, for a few years in the early 2000s, one of the desert's marquee courses. It hosted the PGA Tour Skins Game from 2003 to 2006, drawing Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Fred Couples, and Annika Sorenstam to a Gary Panks design built specifically for that kind of theater. Then ownership changed hands, the course was rebranded Coral Mountain Golf Club, and by 2022 it had closed entirely. For a community built around the idea of golf as a daily amenity, that closure left a hole in the middle of the neighborhood, not just a line item missing from the newsletter.
Here is the part that separates Trilogy from most 55+ communities in the valley: when the course closed, residents did not wait for a new outside buyer to decide whether reviving it was worth the investment. The Trilogy at La Quinta Master Association put the question directly to homeowners, and 1,011 homes voted yes to purchasing the golf course, clubhouse, and restaurant outright and funding its restoration. That is not a typical amenity fix. It is closer to a community deciding to become its own developer of last resort, then following through.
The restaurant's name is not a marketing flourish. Kitchen Ten Eleven is a direct tribute to that vote count, a way of keeping the number visible to everyone who eats there.
The course came back first. Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta reopened for limited public play on December 16, 2024, reverting to its original name and restoring the "Skins Tees," the same teeing ground Woods and Mickelson played from during the club's tournament years. Bunkers were rebuilt with new drainage and a 50/50 blend of Emerald sand, greens were regrassed, and the irrigation system was overhauled from the ground up.
The restaurant took longer. Built on the footprint of the old clubhouse dining room, Kitchen Ten Eleven did not open until May 2025, and the delay shows in the details. The entrance was relocated to open directly into a redesigned bar that flows into the main dining room. A three-sided fireplace anchors one end of the space, comfortable booths ring the floor, and hardwood millwork paired with vintage breeze block accents gives the room a look that reads mid-century without feeling like a costume.
The part residents may not have clocked yet: Kitchen Ten Eleven was named the 2026 Golden Fork Award recipient for Best Remodeled Food & Beverage Facility in the Public/Resort category, a global competition that judges golf club dining projects on design, menu creativity, and overall guest experience. That puts a resident-funded restoration up against projects backed by professional resort developers and national hospitality groups, and it won anyway. It is the third Golden Fork win for operator BlueStar Resort & Golf, the hospitality management company Trilogy partnered with to run the space day to day.
TLQMA board president Mark Reider put the intent behind the design plainly when the restaurant opened: the goal was for it to feel timeless and approachable rather than staged, a neighborhood spot where "the food is outstanding, the drinks are cold, and everyone has a great time," as he told Palm Springs Life when the doors opened.
For residents planning an evening there or a round beforehand, a few practical notes worth knowing:
It would be easy to file this under routine clubhouse news: renovation finished, restaurant opened, award followed. But the sequence matters. A course closes. An outside buyer does not materialize. Instead of losing the amenity or waiting years for someone else to solve the problem, 1,011 households said yes to owning the fix themselves, hired a hospitality operator to run it well, and produced something that a global panel judged better than facilities built with a developer's budget behind them from day one.
That is a different kind of neighborhood story than "new restaurant opens." It says something about how Trilogy functions when a shared amenity is at risk, and it is worth remembering the next time you are splitting a pizza at that high-top table with people who, in a very literal sense, voted to make sure the table was still there.
If you are a Trilogy neighbor with questions about the community, the HOA, or anything else tied to life here, Donna Ambrose is always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
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